


Hero's Requiem

by dragonsong (NekoAisu)



Series: Commissioned Works [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Major Character Injury, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, seat of sacrifice spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/dragonsong
Summary: He cannot stop thinking about how he wishes he could stay and turn to crystal right there next to her, a monument to his devotion, but he does not give in. It’s with dimming vision that he understands why she had said what she did.It is so very lonely, dying without her by his side.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: Commissioned Works [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011288
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Hero's Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> Commissioned by [Usagami!](https://twitter.com/usagami_)  
> Amelene is their WoL and is in no way mine!
> 
> Please understand that this work does not and will not contain links to my commissions or any related commercial/for-profit sites. These work was negotiated separate from Ao3. I do not take any profit from hosting publicly released commissions on this site.

The Crystal Exarch, that ridiculous, terrible man, needs to die. Elidibus knows this with absolute certainty. He is the Warrior of Light, the  _ true  _ hero, the one who brings hope and justice to all those who stand against him. His victory is all but assured. 

That Warrior of Darkness, she who stands alone against some fabricated storm… he will cut her down immediately thereafter. 

He swings, sword arcing downward fast enough it whistles, and puts every onze of power he holds into the strike. They cling to that ridiculous staff, channeling their aether through the focus like Sundered inventions are capable of enough might to put him down. He spares them a passing thought─an apology for an old friend he cannot remember─and expects his blade to meet the frailty of the Exarch’s mortal form. 

It meets the Warrior’s back, instead.

His blade makes contact before simply cutting through as if her armaments are naught but air, bits of shrapnel scattering from the force of his strike. He is pleased,  _ vindicated _ even. The Warrior of Light would never be able to survive that. He is her end, just as he had promised. He can still achieve his goal. The Exarch is not so indomitable as she has been.

There is not time for him to revel in his  mistake victory, however, because the Exarch is still chanting and something inside of him  _ screams.  _ This is not safe and he needs to leave, turn around, flee, do something (anything) to preserve his life. There is no way he will heed it because he does not believe that this sundered mortal creature is capable of ending him.

He is proven incorrect less than a second later. 

The focus of the Exarch’s staff flares with unholy energy before Elidibus feels as if he is  _ burning.  _ Every ilm of his body thrums with a spell he has never seen or felt before. In all his years, the ones he can remember and the ones he struggles to see, he has never been bested.

(He is Elidibus, the Emissary and speaker for Zodiark and all that remains of Amaurot, and he will not suffer himself to die before his duty is done.) 

The Exarch leaves him no choice, though. That spell, the one he manages despite it taking the last of his strength and the life of his inspiration, is too much for his borrowed form. It is too much for  _ any  _ of his forms. 

And for a moment, amidst the blinding light, he can see his dear friends hold out their hands to him once more. He reaches out and takes them, sick with pain and confusion because he realizes almost too late that he still does not know what he is dying for. 

With his last breath, he curses the two of them. How devoted the Exarch is to his toy soldier, how selfless she is in protection of a man too dedicated to pining to ever love her back. 

The Exarch triumphs in the same moment that the Warrior of Light begins to struggle for breath. Elidibus dissolves, reverting to the form he held before, and stares at the crystals in his hands, heedless of the woman he had struck down. 

He rushes to her side, crystalline hands cold against her skin where he checks her pulse. She does not stir, blood darkening her clothing by the second. “No─ _ no, no, nonono _ ─are you there? Can you hear me?” he asks, composure shattered by the sight of the Warrior of Light (his friend, his inspiration, she who is dearest to his heart) collapsed and ailing. 

The spells he casts are sputtering, weak things. He can feel crystal continue to climb up his legs and eat away at his mortality, but pushes it from his mind. He needs to save her. His own worries and wants could come after. 

“Please,” he beseeches, eyes burning with the threat of tears, “do not leave me like this.”

He had bent history, torn apart timelines just to make it so that she would not die, and yet here he is with his failure on display. He continues attempting to cast, but the Tower seems loath to grant him even a fraction of its might. He’s overdone it and is already paying the price, but still tries for the barest fraction more before he turns to crystal. 

“Are you there,” he asks again, “or am I already too late?”

“I’m here,” she replies, rasping through shallow breaths. 

The Exarch bites back a sob at the sound. “Are you able to make it back to Spagyatrics? I─I fear my skills have been exhausted. I will not be of much help and─”

“Exarch.”

He falls silent, listening patiently as she chooses her words with care. 

“Do you remember… when we danced?”

“Of course,” he says, taking her hand in his. “How could I forget?”

She smiles weakly at him, eyes glazed with pain. “Tell me about it?”

“This isn’t the time for stories,” he argues, “I need to ensure you─”

“Please. This is my last wish,” she says, words slow and soft. “Tell me about it again.”

He cannot manage to keep himself from crying, then, but he makes an attempt nonetheless. “As you wish,” he says, words warped by the thickness of his throat where he refuses to spill confessions in the minutes before death. “You were far better than I. I’ve never been much for ballroom. Maybe I would have, had I the chance in my youth.” 

She had been radiant when they danced, laughing even when he had tripped or trod on her toes. He hadn’t been able to look away, wishing that they could have met under different circumstances (that they could have been lovers, had the world not seen fit to tear their bond asunder), and even now he craves the same impossibility. He hopes that maybe in some other universe where there is no need for heroes and the wonders of Allag, they were able to meet. 

“You asked me for a dance and kissed the back of my hand,” he says with a hollow laugh. “It was the first time anyone had done that to me and I botched my reply. What was it again?  _ ‘I─me? Mistaken-you must be-sure?’  _ or something equally mortifying. The young Leveilleurs seem content to tease about it to this day.”

He had accepted with a much more intelligible reply not more than a minute later, but the memory of his mistake makes him look away, cheeks pink. She huffs a laugh, the sound more an exhale than anything else, and he hushes her. “Save your strength.  _ Please.” _

“What came next,” she prompts him, “after your reply?”

“You tried to teach me a traditional Ighgardian social dance and I-I… could not focus on the steps, so enraptured with your joy that I tripped over my own feet─” he shakes his head, shuddering when crystal streaks up his spine like a chill “─and took you down with me. We picked ourselves up and tried again. And again. And many times after that. I never did learn that one properly. You never stopped being beautiful.”

Her smile grows more strained the longer he speaks, but he knows it is not from what he says. He has not managed to soothe her pain any more than he has prevented her death.  A failure in all ways.

“You were patient with me even when it was the hundredth time you’d explained something. I cannot imagine how frustrating a partner I must have been, but I would impose upon you a thousand times more just to have that closeness,” he admits, looking at their interlocked hands with a far-away gaze. 

“Forgive me,” he says, and does not specify for  _ what. _

They sit in relative silence for a long moment while he collects himself, blinking rapidly as if he can somehow will away his tears. It does not work so well as he hoped. He scrubs his slightly less crystalline hand over his face only to feel her fingers against his elbow. He takes her hand, eyes still stinging, and lifts it gently to his face, pressing a kiss to her knuckles reverently. He rests his forehead against the top of it in place of an embrace or apology. He isn’t sure what else to do. 

She looks up at him, pupils dilated unevenly and skin losing color by the minute. She could make it if he could just drum up a little more magic, but no aether obeys his command. “Raha?” she calls, sounding as if he is far away and she needs him near. “It’s getting dark.”

“Oh,” he breathes. “Do you… do you wish for me to finish your story?”

She nods, the gesture a tired inclination rather than the stoic acceptance he’d grown used to. 

He inhales sharply, feeling his chest burn as his lungs protest his breathing (so close to painful immortality that he no longer needs air), and resumes his halting tale. 

“You were beautiful, as I said. You are now, too. I- _ well,  _ I never stopped thinking it. I stepped on your toes and mixed up every other step, but you were so happy that we were able to take the time to put down our mantles and be _ people _ again. I never realized how heavily your burdens weighed upon your shoulders until then. I had assumed you to be infallible, but… I do not see you as anything less than I did before, for your struggle. 

“You are incredible, the strongest, most inspiring person I have ever had the fortune to meet, and I have been falling in love with you since before you tried to teach me the waltz and quickstep. Do not leave me like this. I cannot bear it.”

He squeezes her hand gently. He cannot feel her heartbeat, whether because of his crystal glowing brightly in furious rejection of his mortality or because it is simply too weak he cannot say. Her skin has gone deathly pale, the type of pallid greyness that he saw all too often during his time fighting to save the world from the aftermath of another Calamity, and he knows without a doubt that she will not make it.

“It was one of the best days of my life,” he whispers, voice hoarse, “and I would do anything to see you that happy again.”

She does not smile at him when he says it, does not do more than stare blankly at the Tower’s interior, and when he calls her name, he realizes she cannot hear him. 

“Amelene?”

He shakes her as gently as he can manage, but when he tests her pulse there is nothing to be found. Not even the weakest of heartbeats. 

She looks far from peaceful, not at all like she had when they had danced, and he realizes that she had asked him because she did not want him dwelling on her pain. “Selfless to the end,” he mutters to himself, vision blurred with tears. “Would that I could grant you the rest you so deserve.”

There is not enough time left to mourn, he knows, and it becomes more and more difficult to retain his sense of self the higher the crystal climbs up his neck, but he intends to make the most of it. He closes her eyes and removes the most undamaged of his sashes, wrapping her wound reverently and settling the leftover fabric about her like a shroud. She still does not look restful, but it’s the best he can do.

He sighs, failure weighing heavy upon his shoulders, and wonders if this is how she felt as well. “I love you,” he says to an empty room. “I love you with all my soul, Amelene. I am- _ gods─”  _ a sob tears itself from his throat, visceral and echoing “─please,  _ please!  _ I cannot do this without you.”

He can hear her voice in his head saying that he can, that he  _ will,  _ and that he is so very strong. There is a faint warmth at his back like arms are wrapped around him and he forces himself to his feet, leveraging his staff like a cane as he takes his place before the throne. He wipes his face and pulls up his hood, wrapping himself in the headspace of the Crystal Exarch, he who protects the sacred history, and hopes he looks the part. 

He cannot stop thinking about how he wishes he could stay and turn to crystal right there next to her, a monument to his devotion, but he does not give in. It’s with dimming vision that he understands why she had said what she did. 

It is so very lonely, dying without her by his side. 

**Author's Note:**

> can i offer you a sad fic in these trying times?
> 
> find me on:  
> Twitter [@khirimochi](https://twitter.com/khirimochi) OR [@TheHolyBody (NSFW)](https://twitter.com/TheHolyBody)  
> Tunglr @[Main](https://kiriami.tumblr.com) OR @[FFXIV Imagines](https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com)


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